Cross-border Ecommerce - The Paypers

The Cross-Border Ecommerce Community (CBEC) enables Merchants, Payment Service Providers, ISOs and Acquiring Banks to access valuable content about mature and developing markets that can support strategic decision-making. Read more

Read below about payment methods and how to increase conversion by offering the most convenient online payment methods when selling goods online in Mexico

Find out more about online payment methods in Mexico and how to increase conversion here.
Domestic and Preferred Card Schemes
• Mexico is a market driven by local payment methods. International merchants can only have access to credit cards, which represent a mere 28% of the whole Mexican market. To access the full potential of the market, a company must go local.
• Besides the particularly low penetration of credit cards in Mexico when compared to the other Latin American countries, they are still the main plastic used for online purchases. For a population of around 123 million people, there are only 30 million credit cards, representing 24% penetration.
• Diverging from the rest of Latin America, the number of debit cards is much higher than credit cards: 134 million debit cards against 30 million credit cards, a proportion of almost 4.5 debit cards for every credit card. They are traditionally used for ATM withdrawals rather than for online shopping, something that regulators are committed to change.
• By default, most debit cards are not allowed either to process online transactions or to process foreign currencies. This would be the main reason why the payment method doesn’t match its potential - only 15% of ecommerce purchases are made through debit cards.
Alternative Payment Methods
There are also a variety of smaller, but still active payment methods, including:
• Prepaid Cards: Teléfonos de Mexico (Telmex), the biggest telephone company, has been promoting the use of prepaid chip cards for public telephone services. Most of the population using the method previously didn't possess bank accounts and went from being without a bank to having prepaid cards with payments and banking capabilities on their mobiles.
• Direct Debit: CECOBAN began to offer direct debit services to banks in 2002. Bank customers authorise a corporation (issuer or emisor) to request charges to their account for the payment of goods or services. The issuer then orders its bank (presenter) to collect these charge orders authorised by the customer.
• PayPal: PayPal offers e-payment and transfer services. PayPal is currently accepting payments with Visa, MasterCard and American Express-branded credit cards and local debit cards.
Read an in-depth overview (including sources) of card schemes, alternative payment methods, online payment methods in Mexico and how to increase conversion by using the payment methods in the downloadable country report.